A lifeline for the lapsed generation

Fr John Orme Mills OP finds readers' concern for lapsed Catholics among further ideas for HERALD 2000
`THE Millennium should leave no-one feeling left out or rejected," writes Fr Michael Morton of Birkenhead, and this is clearly also the opinion of quite a wide range of our readers. Currently the focus in Christian Millennium projects is on churchgoers, the poor of the Third World, the homeless, the young, and, now and then, the anonymous millions (Evangelicals have directed their attention to them... and, in a very different way, so is Herald 2000). One group which should particularly concern us Catholics is not listed here: the Catholics who no longer practice.
A couple of weeks ago we received a rather moving 'letter from Mrs Maureen Cooney of Nottinghamshire. We will quote most of it to you: "I am the mother of four children, now in their thirties, who are part of the 'lost generation' of Catholics. Like many other parents of my age, we taught our children to pray, sent them to Catholic schools, celebrated their first Communion, Confession and Confirmation with them, only to see them gradually fall away from the belief in and practice of their faith.
One of the greatest tragedies is that, whilst they were at secondary school the old catechism was abandoned, and a woolly kind of comparative religion replaced solid concrete teaching of what Christianity actually taught. Hence they have a very vague and mixed-up notion of the Church's teaching, taken largely from their contemporaries at university, who certainly in the early 1980s, regarded the Catholic Church as at best an amusing relic of medieval superstition, and at worst an evil empire inhabited by corrupt popes and cruel, often perverted, clergy.
So what I would like to suggest for your Millennium project are two things. First, a prayer that the Holy Spirit might be poured out afresh on our country. Second/5r, an all-out campaign to recapture the lapsed "20, 30 and 40 somethings" by a programme of re-education. They are the lost sheep of our families and they are crying out for a meaning to their lives."
If our arithmetic is right, of the Catholics in this country born since 1950, something between one and two million have lapsed just how many depends on how you define the term "lapsed." It would be fair to say that most of them have little knowledge of the Faith other than a few recollections of what they learned during their first years.
Whereas in the past quite a number of lapsed Catholics had some idea, however naive, of what they had lapsed
from (think of the lapsed Catholics in Graham Greene's novels), the younger lapsed of today do not. Some of them have become Buddhists, a number Evangelicals, Pentecostalists and Quakers, and quite a lot have dabbled in New Age cults, but most of them are in a spiritual limbo. Moreover, many of those in the limbo have gone into marriages or partnerships which have only made them feel more distant than ever from the Church. Read again the letters on this distressing topic printed in the Catholic Herald of 24 April.
Should we Catholics, if we are going to do anything for people of our own country in our celebrating of the Millen
nium, give attention especially to this "lost generation?" Please give us your thoughts on this.
It would not be an easy group to reach. Close to the Millennium, we could try to reach them through press ads or short TV ads aimed particularly at them (with a telephone number for follow-up). The emphasis could be on the fact that the Faith is "ever new": this might be a way of reviving childhood memories without reviving the negative images of the Church many of these people picked up later on.
That, though, would only be the beginning. It is widely believed that there is no room in the Church for people who have had messy and complicated lives. Says Fr Morton: "The notion of the redemption of debt must be thorough and honest. For me, that means a sincere welcome to couples in second, or subsequent, marriages who wish to return to Communion and it means an invitation to take part i,n the ministry once more to the priests who resigned in order to marry."
Nor, of course, is that all. There is also the problem of the sheer ignorance of many of these people. Peter Robinson of Stratford-on-Avon feels ignorance of the Faith "is a tragic void, even today." There is plenty on offer for moderately educated middleclass lapsed Catholics wanting to know something about the Faith the Catechism, RCIA, and so on. But what about the rest the majority? Is the Catholic version of Alpha the answer? More important still, who is able and willing to go out to these people, as one Christian to another? This is something for them, the laity to do, not the clergy Note, too, that in her letter Mrs Cooney says there is a need not only for a campaign, but also for prayer for a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
Fr James of the Franciscan Friary at Rye in Sussex has written to us about what they intend to do in his parish on 30 May, the Vigil of Pentecost. He has reminded his parishioners that for centuries the celebration of the Vigil of Pentecost was second only to the Easter Vigil, and that the Pope has declared that in the preparations for the Jubilee Year this year is dedicated to the Holy Spirit.
So, in Rye, at the beginning of the Vigil Mass the Reader will proclaim the Scripture, the people respond with a song, all will pray quietly for a while, and then the priest will collect all their intentions in a Collect. That will happen three times before the Gloria, and then the rest of the Mass will continue as usual. Says Fr James: "You never know, if everyone likes it, it could become an annual event, which would be lovely"
FR PHILIP CARAMAN SJ died aged 86 last week. He was a well knovvn figure in post-war literary circles in London, receiving Muriel Spark and Edith Sitwell into the Church and advising Evelyn Waugh on the historical background to his novel Helena.
Philip Caraman was born to an Armenian banker from Smyrna and Italian mother on August 11, 1911. He studied at Stonyhurst College, and decided to enter the Jesuits in 1930. In 1945, he was ordained priest.
He taught in Sunderland during the Depression, before studying history at Campion Hall, the Jesuit College in Oxford. There he met the celebrated Fr Martin D'Arcy who broug.ht Fr Caraman with him to the Jesuit headquarters in Farm Street when he became head of the English Province in 1945.
Fr Caraman edited the Jesuit review The Month, boosting its profile with contributors like Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Muriel Spark,Thornas Merton and Francois Mauriac.
His first book was a translation from the Latin of the life of the intrepid Elizabethan Jesuit John Gerard. He followed this with a translated biography of another Elizabethan Jesuit William Weston.
Fr Common then wrote a biography of Henry Garnet, the superior of the English Province who was executed on trumped-up charges of participating in the Gunpowder Plot.
He also produced The Other Face, an anthology recording the minutiae of daily life for English Catholics in penal times.
In 1959, Fr Caraman was appointed Vice Postulator of the Cause to secure the canonisation of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.
In 1964 he went to Norway, which had recently adjusted its constitution to allow Jesuits into the country. He worked as a parish there for five years, having taught himself Norwegian first. He wrote a travel book about Norway, and a biography of the Jesuit., Fr CC .114arrinda1e.
In 1969, he returned to England where he taught briefly at St Edmund's Seminary in Ware before going to South America to study the Jesuit colonies. His book The Lost Paradise inspired the film-makers of The Mission.
In 1976, Fr Caraman returned to Norway for three years, and then removed to Rome to write a history of the Jesuits in Ethiopia: The Lost Empire.
In 1986 , he was invited to take over the parish of Dulverton in Somerset.
At the age of 80, he learnt how to use a computer and wrote a biography of St Ignatius of Loyola.
"Fr Caraman was a very simple, very apostolic man," said Fr St Lawrence Sj, who studied with Fr Caraman.